To help the environment, many Americans have made the change from paper and plastic bags to reusable shopping bags.But a report by a Florida newspaper says that reusable shopping bags sold by some supermarkets have high levels of lead(铅), which can be dangerous to humans, especially young children.Now, there's a call for a rethink about the use of reusable shopping bags.

     “When our families go to the store looking for safe and healthy foods, the last thing they should be worrying about is a bag，”Charles Schumer, a government official said.“Quick and complete research will allow everyone to make right decisions.”

    The newspaper bought more than a dozen bags sold at Publix supermarkets from Florida supermarkets to test them for lead.The results showed that certain bags had lead levels that worried health officials.Some bags had enough lead in them to be considered dangerous waste if people were to throw the bags out with other rubbish.Lead in the bags is not likely to move onto food.But over time, paint (油漆) on the bags can break off and the bags can wear out.When this happens, lead can be freed.

    The affected (受影响的) bags were found in Florida.But Publix has more than 1，000 stores across America.Publix says that its bags don't break any laws about lead levels, but that they have asked the makers of the bags to reduce(降低) the lead levels in them.

    The bags with the highest levels of lead had beautiful designs and many pictures.Plain reusable bags without them are found to have little lead.People worried about lead levels in reusable bags can turn to cloth.Paper bags are also a good choice, since paper can be reused.

    Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.

    Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.

    At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady that her friends thought they must copy everything she did, they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.

    At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess（公爵夫人）found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o'clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, tea-time was born .

    The vast majority of people can buy pretty much anything they need. Not anything they want, necessarily, but anything they need to achieve a satisfactory degree of creature comfort: clothing, water, shoes and food.

    During my childhood, a Michael Pollan book would have been the prize of my year, were I to find it waiting under my Christmas tree or open it upon my birthday. I also used to be thrilled at receiving necessary things, like simple socks or gloves, as present. Nowadays I have too many gloves. I purchase leather gloves online that appear to be a good deal or just because I like their look.

    Prosperity (富足) is a good thing, right? Yes, of course. But for me, I find that the greater ease with which such a generous gift is purchased, the less significance it has when given. This is why I try harder at gifts.

    My first line of dealing with this problem is simply understanding the effect of a little time spent. Even writing out a thoughtful or funny card goes a lot further than a “cute top” purchased from a popular shopping website.

    Need help? Go to your printer. There's paper in there. Fold one sheet in half and draw a heart on the front. Open it up and fill the card with a poem or a few words of your own. Not only is it obvious that you took the time to select your words and write them down, but now you force the reader to stop for a short time and consider what you were trying to accomplish with them. The effort made by the two of you is the gift.

    No matter how you decide to spend a little more time on your giving, the point is just quite simply that you do. You don't have to give a person a handmade paper boat to get a reaction. But you won't be sorry if you do.

    It is good to get in touch with your inner child from time to time, and obviously some people are willing to pay big money for the chance to do so in a proper environment. A Brooklyn-based adult preschool is charging customers between $333 and $999 for the chance to act like a kid again.

    At Preschool Mastermind in New York adults get to participate in show—and—tell, arts—and—crafts such as finger paint, games like musical chairs and even take naps. The month-long course also has class picture day where the adults are expected to have a field trip and a parent day.

    30-year-old Michelle Joni Lapidos, the brain behind the adult preschool, studied childhood education and has always wanted to be a preschool teacher. She's always on the lookout for new ways to get people in touch with the freedom of childhood. A friend encouraged her to start the mastermind course instead.

    According to Candice, her blogger friend, Preschool Mastermind gives adults a chance to relearn and master the things that they failed to understand as children. "I realized all the significances of what we learn in preschool," said founder Michelle Joni, "People come here and get in touch with their inner child. It's magical. We are bringing ourselves back to another place, another time with ourselves when we are more believing in ourselves, more confident and ready to take on the world."

    "One person's here because they want to learn not to be so serious." Michelle said. "Another's here to learn to be more confident." She explained that most of the classes were planned. However, Joni added that while the planned activities were fun, it was often the spontaneous(自发的)moments that attracted students. "It's the things you don't plan for, the sharing between friends and learning from each other."

    What if we could replace oil with a fuel which produced no pollution and which everybody had equal access to? The good news is that we can, in fact, we are swimming in it -literally.

    Hydrogen is one of the building blocks of the universe. Our own sun is basically, a big，dense cloud of the stuff. And hydrogen can be used to create electricity for power, heat and light.

    The problem is that hydrogen is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It does not exist as a material on its own, but is always part of something else. So it has to be separated before it can be used.

    Most commercial hydrogen in use now is created from natural gas. As oil will start to run out in around the year 2030. It makes sense to produce as much hydrogen as possi­ble as soon as we can. But natural gas supplies will also begin to run out soon after. Another source is needed.

    Researchers are now using electricity to make water into hydrogen. Companies are working on the problem in their own areas. The first commercial hydrogen "fuel cells" for computers and mobile phones have already come on to the market Auto companies have also invested over US $2 billion in the production of hydrogen fuelled cars.

    The nations of a hydrogen fuelled planet would not fight over energy recourses. There would be a great reduction in pollution, the only by-product of creating hydrogen is pure drinking water something that is very scarce in many parts of the world. But that is not where the good news ends, once the costs of producing hydrogen have been brought down, it will possibly provide power for a third of the Earth's popula­tion that has no electricity.

    And electricity creates wealth. In South Africa over the last decade there has been a large programmer of electrification. Thanks to the programmer, people do not have to spend their days looking firewood to burn for heat and with electric light, they can work long into the night

Some scientists see radical changes in the way the human race co-operates. Hydrogen creates electricity, and is also created by it. With dual use fuel cells, everyone who consumes energy could also produce it. Late at night, a man drives home in London and connects his car into the "worldwide hydrogen web", which it supplies with electricity. A few hours later, a man in Beijing uses that electricity to power the hydrogen cell in his car. Hydrogen could be the first democratic energy source.

    Like all dreams of the future, it seems very far away. But the threat of war and terrorism in the Middle East has made governments and businesses more aware of the need to end oil dependency and spend more time and money on hy­drogen resource. So maybe the threat of war is not a completely bad thing for the future of the human race.

    Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who loves reading. It may be got from your father or your father's father, and it can just impress people around you with the fact that you are a person of culture.

    From my point of view, reading is very important in our daily life. For example, reading is a way of gaining knowledge in different areas. It can help us have a great imagination, and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field. You can express your opinions about a political event because you have read something about that.

    Secondly, reading gives us the possibility to enter the world of imagination. We can imagine what life will be like in the future. Sometimes, we compare ourselves with the people in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve the problems and tell us what to do in certain situations. Books are based on real life. Even if writers are considered to be somehow different from common people, they often face the same problems as we all do.

    In short, I would like to say that literature is the perfect way of enriching our culture, expressing correctly, having a rich vocabulary, being able to understand different fields and really being considered to be a learned person.